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Caretaker Premier Leads Pakistan Into 90 Days of No Frills

When Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister made his first trip outside the capital last week after Benazir Bhutto was dismissed, he turned his journey into a lesson in civics.

Instead of using a Government jet, he traveled by scheduled flight, economy class. Instead of using a V.I.P. lounge at the Islamabad airport, he checked in with other passengers, and rode with them in a bus to the plane.

And in place of the motorcade of armored Mercedes-Benz limousines preferred by Ms. Bhutto, he had his own modest family car pick him up when he emerged carrying his own bag from the terminal in Lahore.

''We want the people to know that there has been a new beginning,'' said the caretaker leader, Malik Meraj Khalid, 80, who was appointed to head the Government for 90 days from Nov. 5, when President Farooq Leghari dismissed Ms. Bhutto and her Government, charging corruption, nepotism and misrule.

One of the widespread criticisms of Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan was the luxurious life style that she and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, adopted after she won office for the second time in an election in October 1993.

Mr. Khalid, a social worker and political activist with a left-wing reputation, is a former political ally of Ms. Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mr. Khalid was one of many who quit the Pakistan People's Party in protest when Ms. Bhutto took over the party after her father's execution by a military Government in 1979.

Now, Mr. Khalid has set himself the task of creating a new political culture in Pakistan, one that he says will emphasize modesty, thrift and concern for the poor.

He has been given less than three months to accomplish the task before elections, scheduled for Feb. 3.

''I have been given a responsibility to act according to the wishes of 130 million Pakistanis,'' Mr. Khalid told a group of high school students in Lahore, his hometown.

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Judging by the remarks of Pakistanis who discussed Ms. Bhutto's ouster, the caretaker Government has begun its tenure on a tide of popularity.

But skepticism has already set in about Mr. Khalid's ability to make any lasting changes in 90 days, the limit set by the Constitution for holding new elections as well as the deadline accepted by President Leghari, another former ally of Ms. Bhutto, when he used presidential reserve powers to dismiss Ms. Bhutto and order a new vote.

In Lahore, Mr. Khalid said what many Pakistanis had been thinking: that it might be better if the caretaker Government, which is composed mostly of prominent Pakistanis like Mr. Khalid who have played no recent role in politics had at least two years to entrench the changes it says it will make.

But Mr. Khalid appeared to rule out one solution widely favored in Pakistan, a presidential ordinance extending the 90-day period, saying it was crucial that the country's democratic principles be honored as soon as possible.

In interviews she has given since her dismissal, Ms. Bhutto has called the assertions of corruption that Mr. Leghari made against her Government a smear campaign, and she has said neither she nor her husband have anything to fear.

In defense of her husband, the 43-year-old former Government leader told an interviewer that the conclusive evidence that he was honest was that there had been no charges brought against him during the three years she was in power.

''My husband is a well-to-do man,'' she said. ''He did not need to make money through contracts.''